Is it worth it?

I read the post by Jeff about passions. I swore to myself I would try and communicate with my kids that I am living my dream. A farm, organic, a huge (and I mean HUGE) veggie garden, a huge (and I mean gigantic) strawberry patch (ok we are a upick strawberry farm) and we are trying to be mostly sustainable (with a little chocolate and coffee on the side). It is a lot of work. Work. Is work good? Hmmmm. If I find myself stressed at the boys' bedtime cuz I have to work at canning the tomatoes after they go to sleep - or is it the pleasure of putting away home grown organic tomatoes we can eat all winter? When I read his post I thought, Enough! Enjoy bedtime more, talk about how lucky we are to put away such great food and relax. Wow. what a stress release. To communicate to the kids that I WANT to do this and that I love doing it and that we'll all be enjoying the salsa/tomatoes/cherries/peaches/pickles/apple juice all winter (not to mention all the blanched and frozen veggies I've done.)

And now hubby bought a dehydrator and is planning a meat grinder/sausage maker *AND* he plans to slaughter our own pig this year. He doesn't want terror hormones in our meat! (By law we HAVE to take our customers meat to the government inspected butcher to slaughter....but our own we can do what we want.....and if they so choose they could slaughter their pig too........)

We have natural wine brewing in our laundry room. Yep no sulphites. Unfortunately the grapes came from California!

My goal is to not buy any veggies this winter.

Does garlic count? We're already out of our own! (I use minimum 1 head a day!) We ordered in a PILE from an organic garlic farm for planting soon.....hopefully we can be more successful in saving seed stock! I'm already pretty low on onions too.....and I thought we were planting WAYYYYYY to many!

Ok, so I won't meet my goal!

I guess my dilemna is this. Is it worth it? I spent a LOT of time this late summer/fall freezing, canning and preserving food. I could have spent that time doing more hands on things with my kids. I felt sometimes pressured by so much we had to do. We are somewhat tied to the farm - no long camping trips etc as there is always something ready to harvest.

Ask me again after the winter.

If it was I need to figure out how to get them more involved (ok making ketchup was fun!) with all aspects of preservation of our bounty!

How did the pioneers do it? Ok I'm reading Little House books and it's amazing what they did! My boys want to make homemade food colouring now out of carrots. And we will do it. Tomorrow! I guess talking about the crap in store bought food is getting through! (we do say that anything in small amounts is ok and we do have ice cream a lot!)

The french family ( a whole 'nother post) that is staying with us right now have interesting stories....She remembers her parents always working and no time for the kids. Our daily lives are simplified and that means we are able to spend more time with our children. I have to find the right balance.